UNHEALTHY: Excess death plagued Republicans says study
So far, the available data isn’t clearly showing that anti-vax conspiracy theories are the only cause — or even the prime cause — of the death disparity between red and blue states, but something seems to be affecting Republican life spans.
Data on death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that the increased mortality rates affected the political right more than the left.
As conspiracy theories swirled about the virus, the vaccines, and the overall effort to save lives, there were many predictions and warnings that anti-vax politicians were killing off their own voters.
Now, as researchers study the numbers, the data appears to concur.
Of course, there’s a significant disclaimer necessary: this isn’t exactly a study with controlled factors, since it’s an examination of death rates across a population, so it’s impossible to pin the accelerated deaths among Republicans entirely on COVID, much less on anti-vax beliefs and refusal to mask or avoid large gatherings.
However, it is possible to draw early inferences from the correlation — and they’re stunning.
A series of studies has shown this partisan divide quite clearly.
The most recent one, published Monday, focuses on more than half a million deaths of adults aged 25 and over in Ohio and Florida between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2021.
The study found that the excess death rate among Republicans was 43% higher than among Democrats and that this amount increased in counties with higher anti-vax sentiments. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports:
“Our findings suggest that political party affiliation became a substantial factor only after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults in the US. Although the lack of individual-level vaccination status limited our ability to note further associations, the results suggest that well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic.”
Though the study did account for age, researchers note that they were unable to account for other possible differences between the groups, such as race, medical conditions, and health insurance coverage.
The study was also limited by, as mentioned, the lack of available data on vaccination status (researchers could identify counties with low vaccination rates, but could not identify how many of the deceased were unvaccinated).
Another limiting factor was the availability of info about political party membership — populations in Florida and Ohio were the whole sample group because those were the two states from which that information was readily available.
So, the study could not draw an absolute conclusion that anti-vax attitudes led to increased deaths in Republican voters — but with the excess death rate discrepancy only showing up after vaccines were available to anyone who sought one, it’s a damn strong suggestion.
